Just prior to their E3 press conference Sony announced that PlayStation 4’s Media Player will be available to download from PlayStation Store later today.
The much-requested Media Player application works with both your home server (DLNA) and with USB sticks via the PS4’s available ports.
Supported file formats and codecs:
Video:
-
MKV
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level4.2
Audio: MP3, AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
AVI
Visual: MPEG4 ASP, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level4.2
Audio: MP3, AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
MP4
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level4.2
Audio: AAC LC, AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
MPEG-2 TS
Visual: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level4.2, MPEG2 Visual
Audio: MP2 (MPEG2 Audio Layer 2), AAC LC, AC-3(Dolby Digital)
AVCHD: (.m2ts, .mts)
Photo:
-
JPEG
DCF 2.0/Exif 2.21
BMP
PNG
Music:
-
MP3
AAC
M4A
The Media Player will support background music playing throughout the PS4, much like Spotify does currently.
Source: PlayStation Blog.
homerjnick
And my PS3 just became redundant…
JR.
A PS3 is for life not just for Christmas :)
TSBonyman
Now i have a dilemma. I currently use PPOE network settings to get Nat 1 because i can only get Nat 3 other wise. But on PPOE, my home network server doesn’t show up on PS4 (same if i use PPOE on PS3). So i’ll have to switch back to Nat 3 to use DLNA but then my gaming connectivity is going to be fudge. Not that i play online much but it will still probably be less than ideal.
TSBonyman
Well blow me down, switching to Nat 3 has improved my connectivity. Not only can i access my media server but now i can play Driveclub online. I bet it fixes the issue i have with Ubisoft games connecting to their servers too – I couldn’t play Far Cry 4 campaign unless i signed out of psn. Traded it in for Bloodborne though so i can’t check. Speaking of which i hope nat 3 doesn’t have any adverse affect when i want to enlist some co-op in Bloodborne.
I’m pleased with the media player but it doesn’t play all my media, including some home video footage which played very nicely on PS3. I was also pleased to see that the extra channels i’ve added to my Mac install of Plex can be accessed via PS4 although again, not all of them can be played.
TSBonyman
When i watched a video last night, the media server seemed to disconnect from PS4 at one point. Going back to the menu there was no sign of my media server. Restarting the app made my server reappear and when i clicked on the video i had been watching it continued from where it left off. It then disconnected again as i watched the final credits.
I can allow for some teething problems initially but hopefully this issue will be fixed.
Andrewww
My PS3 can do many other things besides this, e.g. play excellent games from my backlog. I’ll definitely hold on to it.
stueeeee
Yeah I’ve got lots of backlog, and also I have all my media freely accessible at any time all neatly organised on the ps3. The ps4 just seems disjointed amd Un natural. Although this is a good step, it’s just not….how my ps3 had everything.
stigdu
Not sure how to reply directly to someone’s post, but @Andrewww I have the same problem. I would have expected to fire up the PS4 Media Player, and it just ‘see’ the files on my NAS, seeing as they’re both ethernet cabled up to the same local network, but no dice. *shrug*
justerthought
Sony’s determination to stop piracy is also affecting small hard drive issue because we cannot boot games from and external hard drive like XB1. The PS4 hard drive is far too small. It’s asking a lot to expect gamers to swop out a hard drive this far into the life cycle because there is a huge amount of data on the hard drive that would have to be re-installed when we eventually replace our hard drives for a bigger one. No large hard drives were available on launch day so we could not swop it out while it was still empty.
The refusal to allow games to be booted from an external USB 3.0 hard drive is crazy because that would solve this important issue. Sony can still protect themselves against piracy by requiring that the external hard drive is reformatted by the PS4 so that all content placed on it is encrypted. That way the entire contents of the external hard drive can be linked to your PSN account and verified before use. Do it Sony we need it quick. A few more games and I’m full.
justerthought
Sony’s refusal to allow games to be booted from an external hard drive is also affecting them financially because gamers are holding back from buying every game they fancy. Gamers don’t want to fill up the hard drive, so they are being selective and just buying the critical games. That is lost revenue for Sony.
hornet1990
Proof? Besides, if you can afford to buy every game you fancy (either financially or time wise) then you can afford the cost and/or time to either upgrade your drive or get someone to do it for you.
Besides, I don’t understand this obsession with having external drives connected – especially when the USB ports are on the front of the PS4. Now if it had a port on the back I’d be quite happy to have an external drive connected that I could hide away behind everything, but I’m not having a rats nest of cables sticking out of the front of my PS4 and my TV unit thanks.
justerthought
The media player is a really nice feature and is heading in the right direction. I can now view my digital photography on the PS4 in high quality and play my mp3 music collection. But why can I still not play my music CD’s. Some of my CD’s are not converted to mp3 yet and some I want to play in the full CD quality.
The video function is also severely gimped. You still cannot play mp4 video files or mp3 music files off a DVD-R disc, or play any mp4 video larger than 2GB. I have all my holiday videos and day trips stored on DVD-R as 4GB HD mp4 videos because they are a cheap storage medium. I still cannot play them on my PS4 and those are universal standard formats that will run for many years to come. So the functionality is still half baked in my eyes due to Sony’s stubborn determination to stop piracy.
Forrest_01
Sounds like you want a PC mate – They will do all the things that you have mentioned here (& more!). :)